Autumn 2003

By 1977, Srila Prabhupada had built ISKCON into a confederation of many dozens of temples, farm communities and restaurants, and accepted 10,000 disciples. He had also authored dozens of books of spiritual knowledge of which over 150 million had been distributed in all the major languages of the world. Shortly before his passing, he issued a directive to all ISKCON centres and ISKCON Governing Body Commissioners (the senior managers running the movement), to be implemented immediately in ISKCON.

The directive, sets out a system by which Srila Prabhupada would continue to accept disciples without the need for him to be on the scene. As you will read in the directive, he names 11 senior secretaries who were entrusted with accepting new recruits into the movement as direct disciples of Srila Prabhupada. The directive clearly states:

However, shortly after Srila Prabhupada's departure in November 1977, the GBC audaciously announced that the 11 secretaries had actually been selected as full-fledged Gurus or spiritual masters, and were to accept disciples themselves, and thus replace Srila Prabhupada in this capacity. This of course is in complete contradiction to the directive, wherein it is clearly stated that the 11 secretaries had been selected to remain in a representational capacity to accept disciples FOR Srila Prabhupada. The official 1978 GBC minutes, not widely seen till now, clearly document this hoax in black and white:

These 11 self-appointed 'Gurus' then immediately carved the world up into 11 zones and began accepting daily, lavish worship on huge, ornate thrones (known as Vyasasanas). They labelled themselves the 'material and spiritual successors' to Srila Prabhupada, and under the pretence of this hoax funneled huge amounts of disciples and money to themselves. Soon, however, the pretence of living a blatant lie began to catch up with them. Virtually all of these original disobedient secretaries descended into an abyss of moral degradation barely befitting a normal human being, what to speak of a Guru.

As an internal memo written by another self- appointed 'Guru' regarding the antics of these original 11 'Gurus' stated:

Given the huge embarrassment caused by the horrendous behaviour of these initial guru imposters, one would have thought that most sane, what to speak of spiritual people, would have held up their hands and admitted a terrible wrongdoing had been perpetrated. Unfortunately, instead of doing this, all we got was the great Guru hoax, Part 2.
 

By 1986, following the spiritual and moral fall-down of many of the self-appointed impostor 'Gurus', the Governing Body Commission tried to cover-up their initial and highly damaging hoax that led to this state of affairs with yet another hoax.
In order to pacify the movement's members and deflect attention away from their own misdemeanours, they suddenly announced that drastic, sweeping changes did indeed need to be made. But their proposed 'changes' did not entail admitting the original hoax whereby false guruship had been grabbed by individuals who had only been appointed as secretaries. Instead, amazingly, it was announced that not enough self-appointed Gurus had been made in 1978. They decreed that now ANYONE who got a majority vote of the GBC could be made a Guru:

And the written authority from Srila Prabhupada for this new 'Guru by vote' hoax? Same as the last one - none. In this way, the unauthorised Gurus in ISKCON have now expanded to almost 80, with the number varying every year as more fall down into moral and spiritual degradation, and more are hurriedly added to replace them.

All the while, this 'Guru mess' has completely side lined the real and only Guru of ISKCON, Srila Prabhupada, who as we have seen authorised that he remain the Guru of ISKCON via representatives who should only act as his agents to accept disciples on his behalf. Unfortunately these representatives decided to hijack the movement for their own ends, creating the chaos we have today.

A hoax by definition has no substance, built as it is on a foundation of lies and fabrication. The Guru hoax reveals itself whenever ISKCON leaders attempt to explain just how the Gurus came into existence. The result is a mass of contradictory accounts about what is meant to be the same event – the alleged ‘authorisation’ by Srila Prabhupada of the ‘Gurus’ to succeed him.

ISKCON Leaders contradict each other and themselves as they try to explain hoax!